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Salary: USD 130,000 - 175,000 / annual
Oklo is seeking an Operations Engineering Lead to establish the operating model and operations engineering basis for its nuclear fuel recycling facility. This role bridges operations and design throughout the facility lifecycle—from design and construction through commissioning, startup, and ramp-up—ensuring the facility is safe, secure, operable, maintainable, testable, and capable of meeting performance objectives.
The Operations Engineering Lead will translate operational, safety, security, safeguards, material control and accountability, and regulatory needs into traceable design requirements, operating philosophies, system boundaries, operating sequences, preliminary operating limits, procedures, training programs, and readiness criteria. You will work closely with Process Engineering, Instrumentation and Controls, Systems Engineering, Safety, Licensing, Regulatory, Security, Safeguards, Material Control and Accountability, Quality, Maintenance, Construction, and Project Management to integrate these needs into facility design.
Key responsibilities include:
- Lead development and configuration control of the facility concept of operations, including normal operation, startup, shutdown, standby, maintenance, upset, degraded, and emergency operating modes.
- Translate operational, safety, security, safeguards, material control and accountability, and regulatory needs into traceable design requirements, operating philosophies, system boundaries, operating sequences, preliminary operating limits, and acceptance criteria.
- Represent operations throughout facility and system design to ensure equipment and systems are safe, secure, operable, maintainable, accessible, testable, and suitable for remote and radiological environments.
- Complete documented operability, maintainability, accessibility, remote-handling, operator-task, human-factors, and failure-recovery reviews with identified actions tracked through disposition.
- Review PFDs, P&IDs, equipment specifications, layouts, control narratives, alarm strategies, human-machine interfaces, system descriptions, and safety-related design inputs from an operations perspective.
- Lead development of preliminary staffing, procedure, training, maintenance, commissioning, startup, facility-turnover, and production-ramp-up plans with defined interfaces, milestones, responsibilities, and acceptance criteria.
- Establish requirements for system turnover, walkdowns, pre-operational testing, cold commissioning, integrated testing, initial material introduction, and operational-readiness reviews.
- Participate in design reviews, hazard analyses, safety reviews, human-factors evaluations, maintainability reviews, readiness reviews, configuration management, and management-of-change activities.
- Coordinate with maintenance and reliability teams to define equipment criticality, preventive maintenance, spare parts, vendor support, work controls, and asset-management needs.
- Build and lead the operations engineering organization as the project matures, while communicating readiness status, risks, decisions, and unresolved design actions to project and technical leadership.
The ideal candidate has significant experience designing, commissioning, starting up, or operating nuclear fuel-cycle facilities. Candidates with substantial experience in complex chemical, petrochemical, refining, or similar process facilities will also be considered, particularly those who have supported both greenfield projects and brownfield modifications.
Oklo is developing fast fission power plants to deliver clean, reliable, and affordable energy at scale; establishing a domestic supply chain for critical radioisotopes; and advancing nuclear fuel recycling to convert nuclear waste into clean energy. Oklo was the first to receive a site use permit from the U.S. Department of Energy for a commercial advanced fission plant, was awarded fuel material from Idaho National Laboratory, and submitted the first custom combined license application for an advanced reactor to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Travel: Remote employees must travel to headquarters (Santa Clara, CA) twice a quarter annually for team meetings, off-sites, and company events. The first two weeks of onboarding are required to be in person at headquarters in Santa Clara, CA.
**REQUIREMENTS:**
Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in chemical, nuclear, mechanical, electrical, industrial, or another relevant engineering discipline, or equivalent directly applicable experience.
- 10 or more years of experience in nuclear fuel-cycle, nuclear, chemical, petrochemical, refining, specialty chemical, or another complex industrial process environment.
- Significant experience in facility operations, commissioning, startup, maintenance, or operational support, combined with experience supporting facility design or capital projects.
- Experience with greenfield facility development, brownfield modifications, or both.
- Demonstrated experience developing or implementing commissioning, operational-readiness, procedure, training, maintenance, or startup programs.
- Ability to translate engineering designs into practical operating requirements, test plans, procedures, staffing needs, and acceptance criteria.
- Experience reviewing engineering documents such as PFDs, P&IDs, equipment specifications, control narratives, and system descriptions.
- Demonstrated ability to lead multidisciplinary teams, manage interfaces, and deliver work in an evolving project environment.
- Strong technical writing, communication, organization, and decision-making skills.
Bonus Qualifications:
- Experience designing, commissioning, starting up, or operating a nuclear fuel-cycle or radioactive-material processing facility.
- Experience with nuclear fuel recycling, pyroprocessing, molten salts, remote handling, hot cells, radiological ventilation, or radioactive waste treatment.
- Experience delivering a first-of-a-kind nuclear, chemical, or industrial process facility.
- Knowledge of NRC, DOE, or comparable nuclear regulatory requirements and operational practices.
- Experience with operational-readiness reviews, pre-startup safety reviews, HAZOPs, human-factors evaluations, or process hazard analyses.
- Experience with control systems, alarm management, computerized maintenance systems, equipment reliability, or operator training programs.
- Experience building or leading an operations engineering, commissioning, startup, or plant technical-support team.
